Wood Elven cuneiforms
The Wood Elven cuneiforms is a writing system originating in Dragoc. Unlike it's cousin the High Elven alphabet, it is not an alphabet but rather an abugida - there are letters for consonants, and vowels are added as diacritics. After all letters other than 「 」 (n) and 「 」 (t), vowels are mandatory. The earlier represents the alveolar nasal /n/ - the only consonant allowed in coda-position, as all other syllables have to be open syllables - the latter representing gemination of the proceeding consonant, originating from historical /tp tt tk/ clusters. Origins The origins of the writing system are shrouded in mystery. Attempts to link it with Early High Elven or Lizardman writing systems have been fruitless so far, meaning that the writing system is most likely completely unique. The first written records came from the 13th century BEKE - Archaic Wood Elven was the first Elven language to have written records written by native speakers. Variants Archaic Wood Elven In Archaic Wood Elven, the writing system was rather straightforward, with the exception of the phoneme /ə/, which was inconsistently written as either 「 」 (a) or 「 」 (e). /jə/ was usually written either as 「 」 (i) or 「 」 (ye), /wə/ as 「 」 (u) or 「 」 (wo). In native Wood Elven words semivowel /w/ was only tolerated in isolation or after /k w/, coalescing to labio-velar stops /kʷ gʷ/. The clusters /pw bw tw dw t͡sw d͡zw sw zw rw nw mw/ were only present in foreign words, and most likely, the /w/ in them got stretched into a full vowel /u/ or was elided completely, as Wood Elves usually had trouble pronouncing those clusters. Classical Wood Elven In Classical Wood Elven, the language has underwent several sound shifts that the writing system accounted for only in a limited manner. For example, the original Archaic Wood Elven /p/ became an F-sound /ɸ/, except when geminated. A new letter was invented for the /p/ sound. The letter combinations originally used for /tw dw/ were used for for the affricates /t͡s d͡z/ before any vowel other than /u/ in loanwords. The writing system lost some of its phonemic character too - 「 」 - originally stood for /si/ in Archaic Wood Elven, but it was used for /ɕi/. Likewise, 「 」 - originally standing for /ti/ - stood for /t͡ɕi/, 「 」 - originally standing for /tu/ - started standing for /t͡su/, etc. Some would argue that this was not a loss of phonemic-ness, as to someone being familiar enough with the language, it is self evident that consonants get palatalized before /i/, and that historical clusters with /j/ also imply palatalization. Not to mention, during the Classical Wood Elven period, the new palatal sibilants ʑ t͡ɕ d͡ʑ were not independent phonemes yet, but allophones of /s z t d/ before /i/ and /j/ - writing rarely caters for allophones in any language, as writing tends to be phonemic, not phonetic. Long vowels are distinguished from short vowels the following way: * The short /a/ was written 「 」 (a), the long /aː/ was wirtten 「 」 (aa) * The short /e/ was wirtten 「 」 (e), the long /eː/ was wirtten 「 」 (ei) ** The long /jɛː/ was written 「 」 (yai) * The short /o/ was wirtten 「 」 (o), the long /oː/ was wirtten 「 」 (ou) ** The long /ɔː/ was written 「 」 (au) * The short /i/ was wirtten 「 」 (i), the long /iː/ was wirtten 「 」 (ii) * The short /u/ was wirtten 「 」 (u), the long /uː/ was wirtten 「 」 (uu) Wood Elven (Dragoc) Current Wood Elven has changed little from its ancestor, other than throwing out the redoundant combinations from everyday use - nevertheless, they are still taught, in order to read older literature. The combinations 「 」 (we), 「 」 (wo) and 「 」 (wi) are used in loanwords only. Long vowels are distinguished from short vowels the following way: * The short /a/ is wirtten 「 」 (a), the long /aː/ is wirtten 「 」 (aa) * The short /ɛ/ is wirtten 「 」 (e), the long /eː/ is wirtten 「 」 (ei) * The short /ɔ/ is wirtten 「 」 (o), the long /oː/ is wirtten 「 」 (ou) * The short /i/ is wirtten 「 」 (i), the long /iː/ is wirtten 「 」 (ii) * The short /u/ is wirtten 「 」 (u), the long /uː/ is wirtten 「 」 (uu) Input Everything you need to know is written in Template:WE0/doc Category:Writing systems of Artograch